2021 MFA Thesis Exhibition
No Vacancy

Hoang Vo (b. Saigon, Vietnam, October 10,1991) is a painter who currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Hoang is interested in exploring subjects related to disconnect, fragmentation, memory, authority, and access. Hoang received a BFA Painting from the University of Houston, and an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design/The New School. Hoang has exhibited at Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, China.

Email: douglashoangvo@gmail.com               Instagram: @hoangthecat

The Medusa series was created through an archive of photos I made of femme individuals in my community. The archive itself comes from the kinship, nurturing, understanding, and reflection of how my own community sees me. Eventually, I began to see this archive of memories as material for my own artistic practice. I am interested in the removal of the artist’s hand within my own practice. I question the fetishization of the artists’ hand in relation to the fetishization of the sexualized and gendered body. This installation explores a mode of making which removes the artist’s hand from the work. By digitally distorting multiple pictures of myself, the work attempts to dissolve the expectations of the queer colored body. I use the word attempt not for lack of precise writing, but to emphasize that the reality of identity can never be removed. The work reconstructs my own realities in the fragmentation of my identity and image. The distortion of the self represents the escapable and inseparable realities which confines the human condition. Identity dictates the reality of individual human experiences, in which each human perceives a different reality from one another. By distorting my image, I also deny the audience access to my own identity and body. The work takes my own reality in which I am confined to and forces its own authoritative gaze back at the viewer.